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Export Panel in Bridge CS5 Does Not Work

I had planned on writing an article on the expanded Export Panel in Bridge CS5; however, it does not work. After spending a few hours tweaking permissions in Windows 7, I finally started to Google. Sure enough, I found this error message posted by an Adobe Employee reporting the problem.

Now, I have seen demos of the working beta and the Export Panel is a welcome addition. In fact, it is another reason to hold off upgrading to Lightroom 3. Yes, it is that good! Basically, you create Presets for a particular function (ex. Resize images for presentation, Print to a Photo Printer, Save as CMYK with 300 DPI, etc.) in the Export Panel of Bridge CS5. Then, select the images that you want to process and drag them on to the Preset. Simple, intuitive and a real boost to workflow.

Adobe promises to have this fixed in a future update. I just hope that they do not strip some of the functionality … to protect the sales of Lightroom 3. Keep your fingers crossed!

NOTE: I called Adobe today to try to confirm the status on the fix for the Export Panel. During my first call, I was on hold for 1hour 45 minutes without speaking to a technical support rep. I hung up and called back to try their “call back” system. After 30 minutes, I received an automated call back with no one on the line!!! I eventually worked around Adobe’s phone system by selecting the “all other” option instead of the obvious Photoshop/Lightroom backlog. The rep just confirmed what I had suspected – the new export feature in Bridge CS5 does not work. After spending over 2hours today on the phone with Adobe, I started to wonder what else is doesn’t work in CS5…

NOTE: Bridge CS5 received an update the end of May 2010 which restored the Export functionality. However, there is still no way to print directly from Bridge. For now, Lightroom still has a reason to exist …

For some reason CS5 has Java in it’s program folder. So I did just what you said, I downloaded Java 6.20 and copied from the Java folder to CS5’s Java folder. Now I don’t have any old versions of Java on the PC. Not sure why CS5 has it’s own Java and doesn’t use the PC’s Java – except that not every PC has Java installed maybe.